Day 2: Auckland to Paihia

This morning we drove 20 mins into Auckland CBD to visit Weta Workshop Unleashed, a movie set creation company that did a lot of work on the Hobbit and LOTR characters. We booked into a 90 min tour and then a 60 min workshop for Cormac to make a prop out of cardboard.

The place was amazing and even better we were the only folk in the workshop so got 1:1 personalised attention. We ended up with a Thor-like hammer, which is pretty cool, a hoodie for Cormac and some amazing photos

After lunch at a kebab shop, we hit the road to drive about 3 hours north to the Northland area of North Island. We are staying in a small town called Paihia (pronounced pie-here), on the east coast of Northland, Bay of Islands area, where we arrived about 5pm.

Dinner was pasta and tacos at a local bar come butcher, which was a somewhat odd combination.

Tomorrow we were due to do a 1.5hr speed boat trip to visit to a place off the coast called the Hole in the Rock, but I got an email to say there is going to be bad weather and it is likely to be modified to just putter around the islands, if it goes at all.

Then we got another email to say our day long bus excursion the following day up to Cape Reinga (the tippy top of NZ) has been cancelled because of forecast bad weather. So now we have to work out a change our plans for the next couple of days. Sigh...Read more